Ruud van Nistelrooy - New Manager - Official

[Larry_LCFC]

Doesn't matter what we do with the defence really, we are so weak going forward, particularly without Fatawu. Totally limp and ineffective attacking threat.

[Mickyblueeyes]

I think there’s a lot to like about RVN. There are aspects where you see improvements with certain players. However, this is not a manager or certainly not a manager at this level. His inability to change things from the offset, his inability to keep the team competitive for 90minutes. The collapse of the team on various occasions. And not being able to get the best out of the best players is quite telling. 
 

I think our job is the hardest in the league with all that is going on in the background. The reality is, this is far too big a job for him. We will go down under him and very soon it will be inevitable. I think it will be quite frustrating. If he finishes the season, I’ll be surprised. 

[filbertway]

30 minutes ago, coolhandfox said:

Can't keep battering the players, he's got to try and encourage them.

Not saying he should be battering them, but he shouldn't be making out that it was a good performance either. 2nd half was ghastly.

 

Think the players were right to be disappointed.

[HankMarvin]

23 minutes ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

There are aspects where you see improvements with certain players

What aspects do you think have improved and would you consider that enough to say the players performance has improved as a result?

 

Bilal was probably going to improve with game time anyway.

Soumare had shown glimpses of being a better player under Cooper since his return from Seville. 
Defence has been awful in general.

Attack has been worse since his arrival to?

Considering the level he played and his experience as a forward, you would’ve expected the strikers to have at least looked more clinical.

[sdb]

5 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

What aspects do you think have improved and would you consider that enough to say the players performance has improved as a result?

 

Bilal was probably going to improve with game time anyway.

Soumare had shown glimpses of being a better player under Cooper since his return from Seville. 
Defence has been awful in general.

Attack has been worse since his arrival to?

Considering the level he played and his experience as a forward, you would’ve expected the strikers to have at least looked more clinical.

I'd have to agree. We look so passive and I see absolutely no identity in this team at all. Several teams have appointed new managers since RVN came in and their style of play is already clear to see. I honestly don't think he has a clue about how he wants us to play. The similarities to Cooper are incredible really. What the interview panel go looking for is beyond me.

[whoareyaaa]

35 minutes ago, filbertway said:

Not saying he should be battering them, but he shouldn't be making out that it was a good performance either. 2nd half was ghastly.

 

Think the players were right to be disappointed.

Soon as Ndidi and Thomas came off we collapsed 

[Mickyblueeyes]

8 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

What aspects do you think have improved and would you consider that enough to say the players performance has improved as a result?

 

Bilal was probably going to improve with game time anyway.

Soumare had shown glimpses of being a better player under Cooper since his return from Seville. 
Defence has been awful in general.

Attack has been worse since his arrival to?

Considering the level he played and his experience as a forward, you would’ve expected the strikers to have at least looked more clinical.

I said improvements with certain players not the team. I’ve seen improvements with Bilal, Soumare and BCDR. If you read the rest of the post, you’ll see that I am quite critical of his performance of improving the team and being influential in overall improvement.  I doubt he has it in him to do so. I am also highly critical of his inability to improve the teams performance generally. So, baring that sentence, I’m probably more critical of RVNs overall performance than most - I would not be disappointed if we got the corner flag pic this weekend.

[kingfox]

He may not be the right man, but last night yet again proved how tied his hands are, because our squad depth is simply not good enough. 
 

You can moan about the substitutions all you want, in Ndidi’s case he was never going to play the full 90 last night, managing his minutes is going to be crucial, because we don’t want to run him into the ground and he gets injured again. Our alternatives to Ndidi though are Winks and Skipp, that’s not RVN’s fault, that’s on recruitment for not signing an adequate replacement for Ndidi. 
 

Regardless who starts out of Mavididi, Ayew, Reid and McAteer, more often than not, two of them will be coming on anyway, not an ideal situation. Yet again that’s not Ruud’s fault, that’s on Cooper for wanting the likes of Ayew and Reid in the first place. 
 

Ruud has had his faults, but if we end up getting relegated, our lack of squad depth will play a huge part in it. 

[HankMarvin]

1 minute ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

I said improvements with certain players not the team. I’ve seen improvements with Bilal, Soumare and BCDR. If you read the rest of the post, you’ll see that I am quite critical of his performance of improving the team and being influential in overall improvement.  I doubt he has it in him to do so. I am also highly critical of his inability to improve the teams performance generally. So, baring that sentence, I’m probably more critical of RVNs overall performance than most - I would not be disappointed if we got the corner flag pic this weekend.

Yeah I read it, I understood what you meant. That’s why I asked what aspects (of their game) had improved and if that was enough to say the general performance on the player had improved.

I wasn’t digging you out, but curious to know if it was something I hadn’t seen.

[Mickyblueeyes]

3 minutes ago, kingfox said:

He may not be the right man, but last night yet again proved how tied his hands are, because our squad depth is simply not good enough. 
 

You can moan about the substitutions all you want, in Ndidi’s case he was never going to play the full 90 last night, managing his minutes is going to be crucial, because we don’t want to run him into the ground and he gets injured again. Our alternatives to Ndidi though are Winks and Skipp, that’s not RVN’s fault, that’s on recruitment for not signing an adequate replacement for Ndidi. 
 

Regardless who starts out of Mavididi, Ayew, Reid and McAteer, more often than not, two of them will be coming on anyway, not an ideal situation. Yet again that’s not Ruud’s fault, that’s on Cooper for wanting the likes of Ayew and Reid in the first place. 
 

Ruud has had his faults, but if we end up getting relegated, our lack of squad depth will play a huge part in it. 

It’s not a fantastic squad and that’s granted but the subs. Ndidi back after a period out, it’s likely he would have to come off. He’s coming off when we are 1-0 up. Which is even better. Anyone who has watched us could see the difference yesterday. At some point United were going to wake up. He made 2 subs at the time. Woyo and Winks. Why not bring on Skipp and Winks and take off Ayew or BCDR ? Fill the Wilf role with two midfielders, give Bilal more freedom for the counter, protect the fragile back 4. 
 

There are obvious criticisms for doing the same things over and over again

[Mickyblueeyes]

2 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

Yeah I read it, I understood what you meant. That’s why I asked what aspects (of their game) had improved and if that was enough to say the general performance on the player had improved.

I wasn’t digging you out, but curious to know if it was something I hadn’t seen.

No I didn’t think you were mate - to be honest it was trying to be positive before I ripped into him. It’s a fair question and your response showed why it’s another comment to challenge. I’m struggling with Rvn and can’t see too many positives.

[HankMarvin]

5 minutes ago, kingfox said:

He may not be the right man, but last night yet again proved how tied his hands are, because our squad depth is simply not good enough. 
 

You can moan about the substitutions all you want, in Ndidi’s case he was never going to play the full 90 last night, managing his minutes is going to be crucial, because we don’t want to run him into the ground and he gets injured again. Our alternatives to Ndidi though are Winks and Skipp, that’s not RVN’s fault, that’s on recruitment for not signing an adequate replacement for Ndidi. 
 

Regardless who starts out of Mavididi, Ayew, Reid and McAteer, more often than not, two of them will be coming on anyway, not an ideal situation. Yet again that’s not Ruud’s fault, that’s on Cooper for wanting the likes of Ayew and Reid in the first place. 
 

Ruud has had his faults, but if we end up getting relegated, our lack of squad depth will play a huge part in it. 

With Mads and Ndidi back that will be like new signings, so we should according to those who made excuses for the shit performances see an uptick in results. 
 

It might be a shit squad, but he can’t come out of this with any credit, if he fails to match the previous sacked manager point per game average at the very least.

[Paninistickers]

5 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Ndidi’s case he was never going to play the full 90 last night, managing his minutes is going to be crucial, because we don’t want to run him into the ground and he gets injured again. Our alternatives to Ndidi though are Winks and Skipp, that’s not RVN’s fault

Yeah, but the point was made last night. 

 

Winks cannot do what Wilf does. Yet he's asked to do so. It won't work. As we've seen game after game after game. 

 

So what to do as a manger?!....maybe cover the weaknesses and don't just go like for like. 

[kenny]

10 minutes ago, kingfox said:

He may not be the right man, but last night yet again proved how tied his hands are, because our squad depth is simply not good enough. 
 

You can moan about the substitutions all you want, in Ndidi’s case he was never going to play the full 90 last night, managing his minutes is going to be crucial, because we don’t want to run him into the ground and he gets injured again. Our alternatives to Ndidi though are Winks and Skipp, that’s not RVN’s fault, that’s on recruitment for not signing an adequate replacement for Ndidi. 
 

Regardless who starts out of Mavididi, Ayew, Reid and McAteer, more often than not, two of them will be coming on anyway, not an ideal situation. Yet again that’s not Ruud’s fault, that’s on Cooper for wanting the likes of Ayew and Reid in the first place. 
 

Ruud has had his faults, but if we end up getting relegated, our lack of squad depth will play a huge part in it. 

All of this is true enough.

 

What he isn't doing is as follows:

- Deviating from the lopsided formation that cooper demonstrated doesn't work

- Playing Okoli who is our most dominant defender

- Getting form out of Buonanotte

- Managing vardys time on the pitch and using Dakas work rate and pressing 

- Only playing Mavididi when he is isolated and triple marked to fully expose his flaws

- only using skipp in a double pivot when he has demonstrated that he looks ok as a ball carrier and useless as a 6

 

[Guy]

1 hour ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

I think there’s a lot to like about RVN. There are aspects where you see improvements with certain players. However, this is not a manager or certainly not a manager at this level. His inability to change things from the offset, his inability to keep the team competitive for 90minutes. The collapse of the team on various occasions. And not being able to get the best out of the best players is quite telling. 
 

I think our job is the hardest in the league with all that is going on in the background. The reality is, this is far too big a job for him. We will go down under him and very soon it will be inevitable. I think it will be quite frustrating. If he finishes the season, I’ll be surprised. 

Including yesterday's farce (clearly offside re Maguire), then even so that's now 8 defeats from 9 with only a somewhat flukey win versus a very abject Spurs to crow about! I dare say we'd have gone on to lose yesterday in extra time with the way the game was going and the way it had swung besides. Whether it was Cooper still here or RvN as now then we definitely deserve to go down with this team on present evidence and will be fulfilling that dubious honour if we don't get at least one win from the next three games and hope others around us continue to slip up. I too will be surprised if Ruud stays the course for the remainder of the season at this rate but it will ultimately be his decision if he stays or walks.

Edited 8 February by Guy

[kingfox]

43 minutes ago, Mickyblueeyes said:

It’s not a fantastic squad and that’s granted but the subs. Ndidi back after a period out, it’s likely he would have to come off. He’s coming off when we are 1-0 up. Which is even better. Anyone who has watched us could see the difference yesterday. At some point United were going to wake up. He made 2 subs at the time. Woyo and Winks. Why not bring on Skipp and Winks and take off Ayew or BCDR ? Fill the Wilf role with two midfielders, give Bilal more freedom for the counter, protect the fragile back 4. 
 

There are obvious criticisms for doing the same things over and over again

His subs have pissed me off plenty of times this season, but when it came to last night, I wasn’t surprised he made the subs that he did. Maybe Justin for Coulibaly instead, but Ndidi was always going to come off early. Whether it was Winks, Skipp or both coming on, losing Ndidi’s defensive nous was always going to hinder us, because we have nobody else who can do what he does. Yet again that comes back to recruitment and having an imbalanced squad. You can say Winks and Skipp are similar to each other, but nobody is similar to Ndidi. Soumare has shown improvements, but defensively he is still capable of bad habits. 
 

41 minutes ago, HankMarvin said:

With Mads and Ndidi back that will be like new signings, so we should according to those who made excuses for the shit performances see an uptick in results. 
 

It might be a shit squad, but he can’t come out of this with any credit, if he fails to match the previous sacked manager point per game average at the very least.

The key for me is Ndidi from now till the end of the season. We have seen under Ruud albeit minimal, how crucial he is to this team. It’s going to be an extremely difficult task to stay in the division, but Ndidi being fit and showing good form hopefully sees the team improve as a whole. 
 

38 minutes ago, Paninistickers said:

Yeah, but the point was made last night. 

 

Winks cannot do what Wilf does. Yet he's asked to do so. It won't work. As we've seen game after game after game. 

 

So what to do as a manger?!....maybe cover the weaknesses and don't just go like for like. 

And as I’ve just said to Micky, that’s down to recruitment and squad imbalance. We have no proper alternative to Wilf, when he is out injured or he goes off like he did last night, the only alternatives we have is Winks or Skipp, two players who just don’t have the defensive nous that Wilf does. 
 

Ruud just doesn’t have the right options to “cover the weaknesses”. Ndidi was always going to come off early last night, but what was Ruud supposed to do. As I’ve also said above, whether it was Winks, Skipp or both coming on, taking Ndidi out was always going to hinder us. What this squad is missing is another ball winning midfielder, that’s been evident ever since Ndidi got injured, we didn’t rectify it in January now Ruud is left with imbalanced options. 

37 minutes ago, kenny said:

All of this is true enough.

 

What he isn't doing is as follows:

- Deviating from the lopsided formation that cooper demonstrated doesn't work

- Playing Okoli who is our most dominant defender

- Getting form out of Buonanotte

- Managing vardys time on the pitch and using Dakas work rate and pressing 

- Only playing Mavididi when he is isolated and triple marked to fully expose his flaws

- only using skipp in a double pivot when he has demonstrated that he looks ok as a ball carrier and useless as a 6

 

All fair points. I said on this thread last week that I wouldn’t mind seeing a formation change. 
 

Okoli has hardly covered himself in glory this season, look at that mixup against Everton for example, but after last night’s performance he deserves a run in the side. 
 

Hardly using Buonanotte is a bizarre one. 
 

He’s used Vardy far too often, but our alternative is Daka, that just sums up our poor squad depth. 
 

As for Skipp, I really don’t know what he is best at. In his loan spell at Norwich, he was basically used like how Maresca used Winks for us last season. 

Edited 8 February by kingfox

[Dan]

What's disappointed me about him is he's seemed very one-dimensional where I thought he was meant to be a bit more pragmatic. I mean it's one thing trotting out the same system every game anyway, but to go for a like for like sub yesterday of Ndidi to Winks at that period of the game. Just reeks of idealism.

 

He is nowhere near the club's main issue but I'm very unconvinced he's the answer.

[HarryDee8]

If he plays vestergaard and faes as a CB pair again,  he's officially an idiot

[Blue-fox]

10 hours ago, BKLFox said:

He has to do something to protect the back and get bodies in the box so I’d be happy with something along these lines, however, I’d change Daka for FB putting him alongside BEK.

I’m suggesting solely on looking at subs because we can then make changes without changing the shape.
We have players to switch out the WBs with Thomas, Ricardo and 1 of JJ or WC depending on who starts.

Daka for Vardy obviously.

Then it gets a little more interesting for BEK/FB because we don’t have the skill set of them on the bench but we have enough bodies that could support a front 3 in McAteer, Mavadidi & the grandad twins obviously you lose the guile of the other 2 but you replace with confusion and speed for first option or for 2nd option the oaps are used to just fill the space if trying to see a game out?

 

Then, and all depends on league we end up in and who we have to part with we look at specific position, the 2x 8/10 we would need to replace FB for a start, CBs at least 1 but we will have Souttar and Nelson back so?, WB, DMs, CF ??

We also have Fats returning, Alves, Evans, Monga, Braybrooke etc I think as you do this set up is easier to implement with the players we have & to add specialist players into the system, the current formation we are to weak through the centre, exposed at the back and trying to put players in positions they don’t excel in.

 

Kinda lost me way there but to some up yes we need to change shape to be more compact at the back and provide options up front with bodies closer to Vardy 

Next season is next season. Can cross that bridge in the summer 

[daddylonglegs]

On 08/02/2025 at 21:51, Blue-fox said:

Next season is next season. Can cross that bridge in the summer 

Looks like the minutes from Rudkin's latest one-to-one with Big Suze.

[Blue-fox]

1 hour ago, daddylonglegs said:

Looks like the minutes from Rudkin's latest one-to-one with Big Suze.

It is true thought isn’t it. Just got to somehow try and survive for this season and hope to sign 4/5 quality players in the summer if we do stay up. 

[Chelmofox]

14 hours ago, Blue-fox said:

It is true thought isn’t it. Just got to somehow try and survive for this season and hope to sign 4/5 quality players in the summer if we do stay up. 

[Vazman]

14 hours ago, Blue-fox said:

It is true thought isn’t it. Just got to somehow try and survive for this season and hope to sign 4/5 quality players in the summer if we do stay up. 

Which remaining matches do you see us winning to achieve  this.  I think we all know deep down we are relegated, the club dont give a shit, no effort or desire from the Top to the Players, to even stage a comeback or have any fight to stay up.

[MGLCFC]

26 minutes ago, Vazman said:

he club dont give a shit, no effort or desire from the Top to the Players,

Perhaps the players enjoy playing and winning most weeks in the Championship, rather than losing every week in the Prem. It gives their ego's an inflated boost, rather than showing just how sub standard most are as top level footballers.

[Lutterworth Fox]

18 minutes ago, MGLCFC said:

Perhaps the players enjoy playing and winning most weeks in the Championship, rather than losing every week in the Prem. It gives their ego's an inflated boost, rather than showing just how sub standard most are as top level footballers.

Think you'll be sadly disappointed if you think we'll win week after week in the championship next season.